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Talking Better About No-Self

I first ran into this problem when I told my mom I had tried LSD. She took it surprisingly well, especially as someone who grew up during the peak of 1970s/80s drug war propaganda.

But what preceded this admission was a long conversation, walking along the beach, where I tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to convince her that the “self” does not exist.

The sense of self is an illusion, there is no separateness between individuals or anything else, we feel like egos but those egos aren’t really there…

No matter how I phrased it, she wasn’t buying. I became increasingly frustrated and she became increasingly defensive, as I kept insisting that not just the two of us but everyone in the world somehow didn’t really exist.

Eventually I said something like, Well, I took LSD, and this all seemed true then. Not only that, but that reality felt more real than this one, and it still does now.

While this shed some much-needed light on the situation, and gave my mom some understanding as to why I believed this craziness, it still did little to persuade her of any of it.

A hard problem

In hindsight, it’s no surprise this conversation went the way it did. Something I’ve learned since is that effectively getting across the concept of “no self” is an extremely hard thing to do.

This is not surprising either, as the majority of our life experiences continually confirm what seems to be the existence of a self. Our societies, built on shared ideas about reality, contain within their structure the assumption that we are all distinct, separate individuals. Thus our collective beliefs, behaviours, and interactions all confirm it too.

Core aspects of our direct experience – namely thoughts and the sense of agency or free will – also continually solidify the illusion. In a multitude of ways, the idea of a “no self” goes against everything we have been told is true, and even what feels true subjectively.

When you consider the nature of the ego itself, it becomes even clearer why this concept is so difficult to convey. An ego is naturally defensive and self-preserving. It doesn’t want to let go of its sense of control, and it clings to a perceived sense of legitimacy and importance. That’s what egos do.

So telling an ego it’s not really there generally doesn’t get a very good reaction. No one likes being told they don’t exist.

You have to address someone on the level of the self – this is how we communicate and interact – but then convince them that that self is not really there.

And how it often feels to people, I think, is that you are somehow diminishing or trying to steal away everything that feels most true, most salient, and most important to them.

This is a hard problem. But the lack of self, it seems to me, is the core counterintuitive truth about the human experience. This feeling of being only a distinct, separate self is the ultimate cognitive bias, and recognizing it as such is the one concept that is most important and necessary to spread.

It is the single idea that, if more widely understood, would do the most good in terms of solving the most problems and reducing the most human suffering.

A two part solution (?)

There appear to be two aspects to understanding no-self at an individual level: conceptual or theoretical understanding at the level of the mind, and understanding or feeling through direct experience.

The latter aspect, direct experience of no-self, can come about in a number of ways:

It can come through spontaneous mystical/spiritual/transcendent experience, although this is rare.

It often comes through psychedelic use, this is probably the path with the highest likelihood of success, although it is still not guaranteed.

It can come from meditation – generally a significant amount of meditation – although this is not guaranteed either.

There are also tricks and techniques like this one and others, that are meant to instantaneously bring about the feeling of no-self. In my experience these work either quite well or not at all, and the effectiveness often depends on an individual’s existing familiarity with these ideas.

None of these paths are that readily accessible.

A conceptual model for understanding no-self seems even more difficult. As far as I am aware there isn’t currently a great one – one that is accessible, useful for framing the direct experience, and suitable for spreading and understanding in the 21st century.

All existing accounts I know of come bundled with either murky religious esotericism or new-age mysticism that very quickly crosses the woo-woo line into total and utter bullshit.

So short of telling someone to go read one or more entire books, meditate for several years, or take an illegal drug, the options are pretty limited.

I think ideally what you would have is a highly accessible meme designed for mass circulation and adoption in the information age. Something that can be understood quickly and easily and thus spread quickly and easily as well.

And, as mentioned, this would need to circumvent the natural defensiveness of the ego, and somehow persuade people of the lack of self without invalidating their experience. Rather what it invalidates is the illusion of ownership of that experience.

A better future

Imagine for a moment a future society. In this society, the sense of self is understood to be an illusion – or at least an incomplete picture of reality. For an individual to identify solely as a distinct, separate self is a relic of the past and seen as just another set of primal urges we have outgrown as a species. Another evolutionary adaptation that was once advantageous but that we simply don’t need anymore.

In this society, individual incentives are aligned with the collective good – what is good for each person is at once good for everyone together. Individual differences are honoured and understood within this context. Transparency underlies everything: right action on the level of the individual and the collective is known and understood to be right by everyone involved.

(See Aldous Huxley’s Island for a not altogether unrealistic account of this.)

Currently, however, this remains utopian fantasy, and until then we are confronted with the problem of the illusion of separateness. The core of this is again, I think, the degree to which the truth of “no self” runs counter to our habitual experience.

Even if you can see it, you rarely truly feel it. Even if you feel it sometimes, most of the time you don’t. And even if you feel it all the time – you still have to operate in a world where most people neither see it nor feel it.

That’s where we find ourselves today. So I’m asking you – how do we talk better about no-self?

It is a mistake to say the self doesn’t exist. Speaking in terms of a “perspective”, “filter”, or “point of view” would open a bridge to discussion with people who haven’t experienced the points of view you discuss.

The sense and feeling of literal non-existence or nothingness. The sense of and feeling of complete simultaneous connectedness and incorporation with the universe. Experiencing existence through the realization of the absence of self or the transience of self. Detachment from the inner voice of self-talk. Experiencing the self actually existing outside the body. Gratitude. Compassion. These are all perspectives, and some are mutually exclusive, but they all exist.

It is probably “good” to want to communicate what you have experienced, but things just are. Words can’t convey it, not even to a past or future version of yourself, since they don’t exist and are actually different from you as you are now. The risk is to fold into oneself and get lost. But then, we are all lost eventually, and in fact our self is lost in each moment. The key to this journey is, as they say, to never go full retard.

ha. Thanks, but I thought it was a bit too much as a first comment so I reeled it back in. Related to that original comment, I just read https://medium.com/@yaneerbaryam/why-complexity-is-different-ecd498e0eccb#.23ruw1p3k which might be interesting to your thoughts about the self if you read it and think of the article as speaking to the idea of self (not just science), and how it is defined through various perspectives.

Interesting, thanks I’ll check it out. I think I saw that same article linked elsewhere as well – often a sign one should read it!

anon1

Very interesting article!

A lot of ascetics and mystics and so on from various faiths talk about this as well. That they dissolve their sense of self in God and everything becomes clear.

I think Psychedelics today are a way for younger people to access the kind of insights that religious have had for millenia and also the various native tribes tend to have following some kind of hallucinogen ingestion.

Thank you – yes absolutely, it is a common theme in various religious traditions. Psychedelics are a great way to bring about this type of experience, although access to psychedelics is still fairly limited, along with knowledge about best practices, safety and so on.

Interesting post, I jumped to read this because I also struggle to convey those inner experiences to others. However, I personally don’t find fantasies about a utopian society useful or even positive. I also don’t think that the conceptual route of talking about the self is that useful, at least not on its own. People aren’t convinced by arguments, they’re convinced by what they see as true from their own experiences. A good argument must be relatable in that way otherwise, no matter how embedded in fact it is, the argument won’t be accepted. First and foremost I think that encouraging introspection is the most important thing when talking about this instead of trying to convince the person of anything. And without that what’s the point of convincing someone anyway?

Hey, thank you. With regard to utopian societies, you may be right. Sometimes I bring that sort of thing in when its relevance to the actual topic is questionable. Although I do think it follows, I probably didn’t do enough to explain why in this post.

I also agree that the conceptual route is not that useful on its own. I’m equally enthusiastic about experiential understanding through meditation, psychedelic experience, holotropic breathing and so on. This is also the thought behind my interest in recreating psychedelic experience (or aspects of it) in virtual reality (https://freedomandfulfilment.com/psychedelic-experience-virtual-reality/) – making these types of experiences more readily accessible.

So overall yes, introspection is probably the most important aspect of this whole thing. Part of what’s so convincing about the “no-self” concept, I think, is that literally anyone can experience it for themselves within their own consciousness. I’m all for that. But what I think would also be great (and maybe also necessary at some point in the future) is a good conceptual model for these types of experiences, and I do not think we have one yet.

Andras

After our discussions with Alex, I now believe if you’re going to rationally discuss it (instead of trying to access self-transcendence experientially), it’s best to make a clarify what you mean by an illusory self.

There is a phenomenological self that can be contrasted with a substantive self. The former is one’s experience of being separate from the world and others – this self is essentially omnipresent for most people. No one is disagreeing with this notion of self. On the other hand, the substantive self is what people would intuitively assume underlies their experience of self. That is to say people will generally assert they are a distinct, separate self, which is different than saying they are having the experience of being a distinct, separate self. One refers to a objective reality whereas the other refers to subjective experience. If one ever investigates the independent self they claim to be through any avenue (e.g. logically, neuroscientifically…), one inevitably comes up with nothing.

Thus, this distinction between the different conceptualizations of self can help provide precision to the argument, and explains away most people’s main objection to no-self, which is reliant on their first hand experience and their intuitions of being a self. I think it can be easier to accept that you have no substantive self, but still have a phenomenological self, as opposed to having no-self at all.

I think you’re right – it’s definitely important to define what one means by “no self”. I was planning to do that afterwards in another post but, in hindsight, I probably should have done it first before this one.

That the phenomenological self is there most of the time, but doesn’t *have* to be, is at least part of the evidence that there is no “real” (substantive) self. And while I had always used terms like “real self” and “the feeling of a self”, yours are probably better. (The substantive self being based in objective reality also brings up the question of whether there is objective reality, and then I guess the question is whether or not you can test that something is there – which might be interesting.)

However I’m not sure this will help explain away people’s objections. Because ultimately, it seems to me, you are still saying “the feeling is there, but the essence of *you* (the ego that is felt to be real at the most basic level) are not really there… which I still think will tend to not go over well.

StevieN

How do you address questions like: Who is the one which tries to achieve no self? Who is the one who moves the body at “its” will? Who is the one which is continually “deciding” which direction to take in life? How is it that you feel only those sensations coming from the one body “you” seem to be connected with?

Hey, so the first three questions are basically the same – how do you explain the sense that there is someone there – someone making choices, overriding impulses, performing deliberate actions and so on.

Let’s say you have an impulsive thought, “I want to eat that chocolate cake.” Then your inhibitory control (an executive function) steps in: “No, cake is bad for you.” And you don’t eat the cake.

It tends to be easier for us to notice that the impulse comes out of nowhere (it literally just pops into your head). It doesn’t feel like there is any deliberate action there, and so it is easier to accept that this is not necessarily ones “self”.

While the second part – the executive function – *feels* more deliberate, you can actually notice that it emerges from nowhere just the same as the first. What feels like self control is, if you pay attention, no more “you” than the impulse.

You could think of this pattern as there being another “layer” to the sense of self. But at bottom they are all just processes happening – phenomena flowing through consciousness.

Regarding the physical body – you are right that immediate experience generally consists of sensory perception. This is likely because consciousness is an emergent property of the brain (although no one completely understands that) and the brain is part of a larger physical organism.

(But even this connection can be tenuous, if consider for example out of body experiences, where people have the subjective experience of the self no longer being connected to the body at all.)

But you’re right that most of the time it does feel like we are “in” our body, or “just” our body.

But consider that the boundaries between our bodies and the outside world are quite arbitrary. Are “you” your body? The body is intertwined with the surrounding physical world – for example, when you relieve yourself, when does it stop being “you” and start being something separate from you? When you eat, when does it stop being food and start being “you”? When you breathe air, when does it stop being air and start being “you”? There are millions of microorganisms inside the body – are those “you”?

It starts to get fishy as you draw boundaries between these things. Ultimately it is all arbitrary because these are just labels human beings put on reality to describe it, and none of them do a totally perfect job.

So while it may feel like you “are” your body or that you are “inside” your body, I don’t think either of those really make sense. And I think you can conceptualize experience just as easily as consisting of just consciousness and its contents. Some of those contents are the first person perspective of a physical body, like for example the feeling of looking out from behind your eyes, and the other sensory perceptions of the body. But these are all, at bottom, again just temporary phenomena flowing through consciousness.

StevieN

Right….I agree with the idea that we “create” an idea about us as a separate entity — and that’s just a contrivance rather than an independent reality. But the fact that one’s “experiences” always occur in the local area of the body is not merely an idea.

Do you consider the experience of no-self the GOAL of practice or the SUBSTANCE of practice? When I attempt to meditate (which, per my practice, is more or less opening myself to being aware that I am awareness (or being-ness), I nevertheless feel that someone is up to something, lol. I then consider what the Zen master Bassui has said on this matter (and which many Advaita teachers repeat): i.e., “who” is having these ideas, or experiencing this, etc. Clearly, there is no one who can be identified (by my consciousness, or beingness) who is experiencing — yet…”I” experience!

It’s my idea that my goal is finding the solution to that paradox. Do you see it that way? Do you feel you are able to solve this paradox?

I’ll state it this way: “I” can be aware of awareness being aware, and I can “recognize” that what is aware is no-thing. But it is something, too! And it’s “me,” too! This feels very “true,” but I don’t really have the “recognition” of the experience of “no-self” while this is all going on.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that “we” create an idea since that already implies the existence of an entity. Rather I would say “there is an idea of _____” “there is the feeling of _____” or “there is thought about ____”. It is semantics to some extent but at the same time in order to talk about this concept you can’t always be starting with the assumption that the self is there.

I would say it could be both the goal and the substance, one or the other, or neither. It is possible to approach it in many different ways and it depends on the individual. Personally I try not to go into meditation with specific goals/expectations as it seems counter to what I see as the core of the practice: just *being* with what is. At the same time I would say the experience of no-self (which now, come to think of it, is not really just *one* specific experience but something that can come out of many different experiences) is desirable in the context of meditation practice. In that context it would seem to come along with states of peace, inner calm, equanimity and so on.

With the next question again you are going back to the “I”. Who is the “I” that is experiencing it… this is where some people bring in the idea of a “universal I” or make claims like consciousness is a unified field (we are all individual outlets for the same consciousness) and things like that. It can certainly feel like that is the case but as for objective reality I am agnostic to those claims. Again I would say don’t start with the “I”… there is just experience!

I agree that it is a paradox. To some extent what you are talking about is the hard problem of consciousness, which is the question of why consciousness exists at all or why we have subjective experience.

Maybe we will discover the solution to that paradox and maybe not. We certainly know there are things that cannot be understood rationally by human beings and I am open to the possibility that the “answers” to questions like these may be of that nature.

Finally, I think I understand what you are getting at with the last statement (although you are still always starting with the assumption that an “I” is there). There is the state of being present with your experience that occurs during meditation – there is experience there but there is no sense of a self/ego being there. So during the experience of no-self I do not think there can also be a recognition of that experience, since that would require thought and subject/object distinction. There is no abstraction of experience in the midst of the actual experience itself – there is only the experience.

After the experience you can reflect on it and think “that was an experience of selflessness (or peace or equanimity or something else) but during the experience itself by definition you cannot be having this reflection/recognition. I hope that makes sense…

StevieN

Thanks for sharing these insights. I (lol) think you’re right about beginning each idea on this topic with “I.” This is not an easy habit to let go of.

The self is a real in a way, a wave is real, it’s still exist but not separately from the sea, it’s the sea in a way and it’s a wave in another way. And the wave must not forgot it’s the sea, kind of what Marley sing “one love”, one as i understand, must not Denny him self, one must remember we are all wave and part of the same sea, and that separateness is just an illusion, he shouldn’t go looking for his own desire, but for the good of the sea, since what good for him is what good for all. “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery” as Marley sing, and try not to forgot our (true self), have always moment of this realization.

If one wake up himself to this reality, then all his action will be motivated by it, he will bring some kind of peace to the world, maybe we just need some enough people to wake up and shake the world for a better one.

For drugs, i still think it’s here just for creating a chock, feeling like the one for those who don’t understand it, but we rarely can bring much wisdom to this reality, it’s a kind of cheating, it’s not permanent, and i don’t think it’s possible to archive it easily, as a body living in materiel world we must live and fulfill our needs and try always to have some glimpse of the sea, to not forget who we are.

Work knowing we are one, making love knowing we are love, suffering knowing we are one, what i want to see, as much as the experience of (no-ego) is a magic, we shall not fall for the beauty of the experience but bring back the wisdom to this materiel world.

what i want to say, that we all can have some of those peak experience naturally or with LSD or meditation or maybe in some random moment, but we always forgot them or don’t understand them, but most people at least one time of there life they feelt connection with everything around them, we did forgot out true nature since the beginning of history; and we do it in our life, i did took LSD for the first time two days ago, and i realized that i was there before, i even wrote it to myself to not forgot it,”you’ve been here before” in childhood, in travelling, and specially while listening to music when i was young.

We should not just experience it once, and say well ‘I have no ego” , “i’m god” , “life is illusion”, we must learn from it a try to have it in our daily life, going to nature, meditation, helping other, following our path not some meaningless job, traveling, meeting other people, drugs sometimes, we must find part of the puzzle everywhere, in our girlfriend, a homeless guy, art, music, our purpose for now, is to remembering who we are every day, by doing that maybe others (wave) will come to realize this, and feel that they are still good in life, our true nature.

I tried to explain this to my girlfriend on an intellectual level, and trying LSD, but i just did realize that everybody had his path, on maybe she is not ready and it was egoist from my part to try to push it, so now i don’t try to explain anything to anyone who didn’t ask it or he is not on the same path as me, and instead trying to be just good person, and set my self as an example, in Sufism ( Spirituel islam ) they said : don’t give pearl (wisdom) to ignorant, you will just harm him and harm yourself.

Maybe one day all humanity will come this realizing, and become out true self, free from this body and the mind that won’t shut up eternal, and this materiel world, or dimension or matrix will dissolve, as i understood we save the world by saving yourself, since we are the world.

Hey man, great comment. A wave is a good analogy for the self, I have heard Alan Watts speak about it also as if it were a whirlpool. From a certain perspective it is recognizable as a singly entity traveling through time, but when you look closely you see that the contents are actually changing moment-to-moment.

With regard to drugs I agree that they are only temporary – I don’t think “cheating” necessarily but definitely a shortcut. They are not a durable, long-term solution but can definitely be useful in allowing people to see and understand that there is “more” going on, and they are pretty much guaranteed to work.

Your description of LSD is very accurate in terms of feeling like you’ve been there before. I think many people experience this as well as the feeling of something (or everything) being funny, like you have just remembered or been let back in on a joke that you otherwise in your normal life forget.

Keeping that as part of your everyday experience can be very difficult but I agree that it is essential. Seeing God or divinity in everything and trying to live as if that is the case.

And you are right too that pushing it is probably not a good idea. It took me a while to realize this. But if someone is not open to it then you can’t really force it on them, it just doesn’t tend to work. People have to come around to it in their own ways.

If you have not read them already, you may be interested in these posts:

Something to consider for the experience of no-self: DXM (aka cough syrup, but in its purest form). It’s a dissociative, and achieves a similar effect to that of LSD. The difference is LSD makes you more energetic and outgoing, while DXM takes you within. Do your research beforehand, you definitely don’t want to overdo it. Oh, and it’s totes legal.